Manfred Weber, on behalf of the PPE Group. – Mr President, four short remarks. First remark: I am proud. I am proud as a European, having in mind the comments after the Brexit vote two and a half years ago that a lot of speculation was on the table, that the European Union would experience a domino effect, that this would follow as the experience is so strong in Great Britain.

Having today’s situation in mind – the 27 Member States are so strongly united, the European Parliament is backing their positions, we know what we want. That the people in Europe feel the strength of unity of being a European Union – our Irish friends especially have this experience.

I think we can be proud of what we have achieved in the last month, thanks to Michel Barnier, thanks to his engagement, also to Jean-Claude Juncker. That’s good.

(Applause)

The second remark I want to make is that 28 governments said ‘yes’ to a Treaty, confirmed the Treaty; three institutions at European level said ‘yes’, that’s a good Treaty, and now one parliament has said ‘no’ with a clear majority.

That means for me that the ball is in the field of our British friends, and not so much on the governmental side, mainly on the parliament side. We have there a camp of hard Brexiteers, we have a camp of those who want to stay in the European Union, we have a camp of Norway—plus, a camp of CETA—plus, whatever; so please tell us, finally, what do you want to achieve? Give us a clear orientation and then Europe is ready to conclude the negotiations in a good way.

The third element I want to put on the table is: reflect again on our goals. We have a difficult political situation ahead of us now and we started with clear principles. For example for me, the idea of the single market and especially the idea of freedom of movement – that Europeans on this continent can freely decide where they want to live – is a great achievement of this European Union, and I did and I will defend this principle whatever the outcome of a British vote is and what will be.

And we have other elements in mind, for example, the idea of avoiding a hard border in Northern Ireland or the question of keeping the rights of citizens strong and alive. That’s why I must say that I don’t see any room for manoeuvre if our British friends want to have renegotiations, and if they have further requests in the negotiations then we have also the right to ask further questions and then we open the whole box – not only the British questions would be on the table if there were to be any kind of renegotiation.

So for me there is at the moment no room for manoeuvre in any renegotiations.

And the final statement I want to make is that I am traveling around Europe at the moment, as a candidate like we all do, and I see nobody in the European Union who thinks that the British approach is a clever approach. Nobody is telling me this. People in the European Union tell me more that they see political chaos and the economic uncertainty in the British development. That’s why our main message in the election campaign ahead of us is: don’t follow the nationalists, don’t follow the egoists, they are liars. It’s much better to reform the European Union than to leave or even destroy the European Union.